"cellF" is Guy Ben-Ary’s surrogate performer and also the world’s first neural synthesizer. cellF’s 'brain' is made of a Ben-Ary’s biological neural network that grows in a Petri dish and controls in real time an array of analogue modular synthesizers that were custom made to work in synergy with the neural network. It is a completely autonomous, wet and analogue instrument. Ben-Ary had a biopsy taken from his arm, grew his skin cells and then using Induced Pluripotent Stem cell technology, he transformed his skin cells into stem cells and differentiated them to neural networks. He grew them over an interface to become his ‘in-vitro’ brain. These neural networks control modular synthesizersthat produce the sound in real time.
IMPRINT
Organization: KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis
Curators: Olga Majcen Linn & Tereza Teklić | KONTEJNER
Technical realisation: Jakov Habjan, Filip Pacak
Design: kuna zlatica
PR and communication: Inesa Antić
Thanks to: Dr. Oliver Vugrek, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Gjino Šutić, UR Institute.
The performance at KONTEJNER has been realised within the framework of the EU project Future DiverCities.
The performance in KONTEJNER was co-funded by CITS (Departments of Creative Industries, tourism and sports) Western Australia.
Guy Ben-Ary (AU)
Guy Ben-Ary is a Perth based artist and researcher. He currently works at SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and hands-on engagement with the life sciences, which is located within the University of Western Australia. Recognised internationally as a major artist and innovator working across science and media arts, Guy specialises in biotechnological artwork, which aims to enrich our understanding of what it means to be alive. Guy’s work has been shown across the globe at prestigious venues and festivals from the Beijing National Art Museum to San Paulo Biennale to the Moscow Biennale. His work can also be seen in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work Bricolage won an award of excellence in the Japan media art festival, cellF & Silent Barrage were awarded an Honorary Mention in Prix Ars Electronica (2017, 2009) and Silent Barrage also won first prize at VIDA, a significant international competition for Art and Artificial Life.
guybenary.com
Nathan Thompson (AU)
Nathan Thompson is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the possibilities of man/machine interaction and the hidden corners that arise from this relationship. Mostly he implements machine/robots that play along the blurred edge of the interactive while showing independent thought, only slightly tethered to the audiences’ actions. His work often questions the role of humans in the natural landscape and through these investigations, builds a greater understanding of our inhabited space. His machines are self-built, analogue and lifelike in their behaviour, using custom electronic Neural- type networks that are on their own, very simple but when piggybacked, multiplied and fed back into the stream, display behaviour remarkably organic. The interpretations of this evolving machine language lead to an installation unique to every setting… the participant, oftentimes, both controls and is controlled by the mechanics of these unique lifelike constructions.
Darren Moore (AU)
Darren Moore is an Australian drummer, electronic musician based in Singapore. He performs regularly on drum set and modular synthesizer predominantly in the fields of jazz, experimental and improvised music styles. Moore has performed extensively in Australia, South-East Asia, Japan and Europe. He completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts at Griffith University in Brisbane Australia in 2013 which looked at the adaptation of Carnatic Indian rhythms to drum set.
Andrew Fitch (AU)
Dr. Andrew Fitch completed a B.Eng (Hons) in 2010 and his PhD in 2015, at the University of Western Australia. His main research focused on memristor-based chaotic circuits and has published a book, journal articles and book chapters describing the results of this work. He has been building analogue synthesizers since 1998 and currently runs Nonlinearcircuits, producing a wide variety of unique designs intended for use in experimental music.
nonlinearcircuits.blogspot.com.au
Stuart Hodgetts (AU)
Stuart Hodgetts is Director of the Spinal Cord Repair Laboratory at the School of Human Sciences at UWA and Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science. His research focuses on developing pre-clinical therapies and strategies to repair the injured spinal cord and uses a range of innovative approaches to understand and assess treatment strategies including individual and combinatorial treatments including stem cell transplantation, gene therapy, in vivo reprogramming, tissue engineering, and immunomodulation, as well as non-invasive therapies such as infra-red/near infra-red implantable devices and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Since 1998 he has collaborated with national and international bio-artists, as well as being an Honorary member and avid collaborator, adviser and scientific consultant for the internationally renowned Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory Symbiotica.
Pavle Jovanović (HR)
Pavle Jovanović graduated in jazz guitar from the conservatory in Klagenfurt, in the class of Professor Agostino Di Giorgio, in 2011. After his studies, he returned to Zagreb, where he collaborated with various ensembles and musicians such as the Croatian Radio and Television Jazz Orchestra, Cantus Ensemble, and the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. At the same time, he founded his own projects Cromatik 5 and PEEK 3, in which he explores jazz composition and improvisation. In 2016, he co-founded the ensemble Abstract Construction Collective with Zoran Šćekić, whose expression is based on free improvisation and graphic compositions. They performed at the Music Biennale Zagreb 2017 alongside Chris Jarrett. In the summer of 2020, he completed his master's studies in jazz guitar in Vienna under the guidance of Professor Martin Koller. He works as an educator in the fields of classical, jazz, and experimental music.
